"My question, why do the "marines" on the show always wear a CQB (close quarters battle) gear loadout in all the episodes? Even in the ones where they are outdoors? Is it possible we might see a different "marine" gear setup? "

It's primarily a budgetary issue. We've got the CQB gear, so it's cheaper and easier to keep using it week after week than it is to rent specific items for every mission or to buy a wide variety of gear for stock. There's also a costume issue in that we don't really have specific Marine uniforms, so we use variations of our existing "naval" uniforms for the Marines and distinguish them mostly through the use of the CQB gear.

"My question concerns Sharon's pregnancy. We know Helo is the father. Is Sharon the mother? That is, did Hera come from Sharon's egg, or were the eggs implanted in her from a human source?
If so, isn't she just a surrogate womb and the Cylons don't really reproduce at all? Therefore the baby would still be totally human.
If not, then how the heck did they manage to make her fertile, as female humans are *born* with all their eggs."

My assumption has been that the Cylons created Sharon's eggs and presumably the eggs for all Cylon females. This could change, obviously, but the idea was that the Cylons were attempting to create a virtually perfect replica of the human form, right down to the reproductive system, but that they had been unable to actually reproduce on their own.

"Ron, on another board we've been having a discussion about the comparisons between Galactica and Hill Street Blues, which just came out on DVD (Season One). How much of a conscious foundation is HSB for BG?"

Hill Street Blues was definitely something of an archetype we looked to for developing the structure of the series. I made explicit reference to the show in our series bible and talked about how we would strive to emulate their structure as much as possible. That structure was, basically, to have a self-contained A-Story that would begin and end each week, with smaller character-centered B-Stories that would take place over a few episodes, and finally long-running C-Stories that would arc throughout the season. It was a starting place for a lot of story discussions and script meetings, but we didn't strictly adhere to the form, as you can see from the experimentation we did throughout the first season. The first seven episodes of season two roughly follow this format, but then we varied again from that structure for the rest of the season. Why didn't we hew more closely to the Hill Street format? Partly it's a result of not wanting the show to get so serialized as to be inaccessible to new viewers, and partly it's a result of continually wanting to try new things on the show and mix up the story-telling.

"Why was it that Pegasus was able to escape given that it had networked computers? Seems odd. My theory is that the Pegasus is one huge trojan horse."

This will be explained in the longer version of "Pegasus" that'll be included in the Season Two DVD box set. Essentially, Pegasus had her network off-line in preparation for going into the shipyard for an overhaul and wasn't vulnerable to that point of attack.

"If (when?) working on the show becomes too stressful, are you able to notice and take a time-out? I bet it is easy to get caught up in the business, and therefore lose some of the art. How do you maintain the pleasure in the craft when your role also contains so much of the mechanics, business, and politics of creating TV?"

My wife is very focussed on making me chill out from time to time. I tend to think about the show even when I'm not sitting down and working on it, and it does become all-consuming at times. We try to go to the movies, but often end up camped in front of the TiVo or DVDs. I read a lot -- there's a stack of books on my nightstand at the moment, everything from "The Age of Federalism," "The Assassins Gate" and "State of War" to "Vanilla Slim," "The March," and "Gravity's Rainbow," not all of which I've even started yet. I coach my son's T-Ball team and I'm teaching my daughter basketball, both of which have the added benefit of making me get off my ass and do something physical.

As for maintaining the pleasure in the show itself, I find that it rarely wans, actually. For all the struggles and arguments and politicking, I still get to see the words I write translated and improved by an incredibly talented production team and that joy never seems to go away. There's an immense sense of accomplisment and pride in just stepping onto the soundstage or looking at artwork, or viewing dailies, or putting the film together, and it hasn't run out so far. Hopefully, it never will.